Two Republican lawyer-senators look for loopholes in democracy
By Philip Bump
Jan. 3, 2021 at 12:07 p.m. EST
Even in the face of a jarring effort to subvert the will of the American electorate, Senate political maneuvering remains a rock of constancy.
After scores of House Republicans made clear their willingness to side with President Trump’s efforts to seize a second consecutive term despite losing the 2020 election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to lock down his own caucus to prevent similar endorsements. But given that Trump and conservative media were still roiling the waters with rampant misinformation and lies about the security of the election, it was only a matter of time before a senator would see more benefit in appealing to Trump’s base than adhering to McConnell’s edicts.
The first to step out forcefully to embrace a futile objection to the election’s electoral-vote tally was Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). In a statement, his office announced that he would oppose certifying the result on Jan. 6 to “highlight the failure of some states, including notably Pennsylvania, to follow their own election laws as well as the unprecedented interference of Big Tech monopolies in the election.” That latter point is a hobbyhorse of Hawley’s, appliquéing another plotline in conservative media onto the issue of the moment.
But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has been in the Senate longer and is intimately familiar with attempts to convert conservative fervor into attention. So he one-upped Hawley in a very Senate-y way, assembling a collection of nearly a dozen senators and senators-elect who issued a joint statement focused on the “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.” Nearly 4 in 10 Americans think the election was “rigged,” they noted — a “tragic” development that demanded they intervene.
That development, of course, is a function of those “unprecedented allegations,” allegations entirely uncoupled from reality. Trump and allies, including Hawley and Cruz, have elevated the baseless claim of election fraud specifically to cast a pall over Trump’s loss. That about 40 percent of Americans believe these allegations despite the utter lack of evidence should be seen as proof of a failure of honest discourse, not of the election.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/03/two-republican-lawyer-senators-look-loopholes-democracy/
= new reply since forum marked as read
